Dark Pursuit

She turned around, her neck mottled and a tic in her cheek. She clutched the paper with directions as if it might spin away. “I’m not waiting for you, D., you move too slowly. I’ve got to get down there now!” She swiveled around.

“Mar—!”

“You want to help your granddaughter?” She jerked back to face him. “Figure out what we’re going to do when she gets here.”

“I’m trying.”

“Don’t try, D. Do it!”

She whirled from the library and disappeared.

Darell stood up, agitated and helpless, as her footsteps trotted up the hall toward the kitchen. He heard a faint thud against hardwood like the sound of a purse knocked to the floor. Then her hurried tread down the short hall toward the garage at the rear of the house. A door opened. Slammed shut.

In the silence, air stuttered in his quaking chest.

thirty-four

In the forested hills above town, leaves rattled and hissed like skittish snakes beneath Craig’s feet.

His breaths came short and swift. So little time.

He’d blown it at Kaitlan’s. Totally blown it. He’d planned to kill her then, get it over with, but when the moment came he just couldn’t.

Containment.

No way could he keep her quiet day after day. What did he expect to do, take her car keys and phone every night? She’d end up telling someone, somewhere.

He had to get back to her place. Now.

Fast as he could Craig hurled himself through the darkness. Some fifty yards off the rutted path, he frantically sought the crumbling stone wall. His fingers gripped a flashlight, but he didn’t want to use it.

Where was the wall?

He skidded to a halt, neck thrust out, eyes struggling to penetrate the blackness. Slowly he scanned.

Huge trees, only trees.

Craig cursed under his breath.

He slapped the flashlight’s beam end against his hand and switched it on. His palm glowed red. Raising the flashlight, he pointed straight ahead.

No wall.

He aimed left. More trees.

Right.

There?

He sidled over two steps and cut the beam through two close trunks. Some twenty feet beyond—the rounded edges of stacked rocks.

Craig turned off the flashlight and hurried in their direction.

His toe found the body before he saw it. Stuffed into a hefty-sized black garbage bag, it gave a slick rustle when he kicked it.

The wall lay just behind.

Why the rocks were there at all remained a mystery. No old cabin nearby, nothing to show a longer barrier had once been there.

Fate.

He’d hauled the woman here this afternoon in the trunk of his patrol car, shock and fear injecting him with near Superman strength. A ditch in the earth just behind the six-foot wall offered what he sought—a natural grave. Spotting it, he’d dropped his heavy load in front of the rocks and sprinted back to his car, terrified that his radio might be going off while he was away.

Not until he’d flung himself back into the vehicle had he realized he should have at least dumped the body in the ditch until he could return.

He needed to keep a cooler head.

Before even removing the body from Kaitlan’s bed, he had thought to untie the black and green cloth from its neck. That cloth was long disposed of. Even if by some wild fluke this body was found, it would not be tied to the other deaths.

Craig threw down the flashlight and attacked the wall. Yanking up stones he dropped them to one side. Before long his arm muscles screamed and his breath chugged. Sweat beaded down his forehead and plinked into his eyes.

Desperation drove him on. He had to get back to Kaitlan.

When he’d knocked the wall down, he dragged the near-rigid body to the four-foot-long ditch and pushed it in.

Feverishly he shoved stones over the top. When the bag was fully covered, he used the rest of the rocks to build up the height of the wall, now shorter, thicker.

Finished, chest heaving, he snapped on the flashlight for a brief moment and inspected his work.

Good. It was good.

Craig swiped his forehead and rushed through the dark to his Mustang.

thirty-five

Kaitlan huddled on the edge of the bed in the Jensons’ front-corner guest room. Right hand pressed against the wall, she leaned forward to peer through the window. Every back muscle strained, her shoulders and neck like granite. The last dregs of light from a lamp post down the street oozed onto the sill in a sickly puddle.

From the entryway a massive grandfather clock’s fretting tick tock hammered out the seconds.

Where was Craig?

Kaitlan struggled to figure how much time had passed since he left. Seemed like an eternity. But it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes. Maybe less.

How long did it take to dispose of a body? Would he weight her down in the ocean or bay? Bury her deep in the woods?

Kaitlan breathed against the window and the glass fogged. She pulled back.

Maybe her grandfather was wrong. Craig was in bed asleep, the victim’s body long ago hidden. He didn’t want to kill Kaitlan at all. But now her disappearance would force his hand.

A yowl rose outside the window.

Kaitlan froze.